Rights group sees slight rise in Russia hate crime

MANSUR MIROVALEV, The Associated Press

The number of hate crimes rose in Russia last year as the global economic crisis fueled xenophobic feelings but higher conviction rates kept the number from going higher, a human rights group said Wednesday.

Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy head of the Sova group, which monitors hate crimes in Russia, said 97 people were killed and 525 wounded in apparent hate crimes.

The rise in xenophobic attacks seems to have slowed in recent years thanks in part to more convictions but the problem threatens to become more deeply entrenched because of Internet organizing, she said.

Neo-Nazi groups are growing and co-ordinating their often fatal attacks with the help of the Internet, she said. Ultranationalist thugs enlist thousands of supporters in cyberspace – via Internet forums and chat rooms, she said.

"Neo-Nazis and skinheads are a subculture that has turned into a movement," Kozhevnikova said at a news conference Wednesday.

Most victims in 2008 were dark-skinned, non-Slavic migrant laborers from Central Asia and the Caucasus. The previous year saw 86 killed and 599 wounded in a spike from years past, according to the report. Most attacks involve multiple stabbings.

Nationalist and neo-Nazi groups mushroomed after the 1991 Soviet collapse as a dramatic economic decline spread social frustration, particularly among youths.

Kozhevnikova praised police for a crackdown on nationalist groups that resulted in 114 convictions for hate crimes last year.

In the past, Russian police have been criticized for downplaying the issue and classifying many race-related attacks as simple acts of hooliganism.

The Moscow Bureau for Human Rights estimated there were 70,000 neo-Nazis in Russia today, compared with a few thousand in the early 1990s.

Kozhevnikova said the ongoing economic crisis stokes latent xenophobia and nationalist sentiments among average Russians. The nationalist groups will "use the crisis as an excuse to justify their crimes," she said.

She also expressed concern about pro-Kremlin youth groups that use openly racist and nationalist messages in their government-sponsored campaigns.

Hundreds of members of Young Guard, a youth wing of the dominant Kremlin party United Russia, rallied in Moscow in recent months to demand expulsion of millions of non-Russian labor migrants and called on authorities to ban them from entering Russia in 2009.